We Might Have Roses in December
by nitto-onna
Summary: It could never have lasted...such happiness.


**I feel like hiding my face having the audacity to post this while my other fic that so many people have left such beautiful reviews for hasn't been updated in months. There's a really good reason which I will explain when I update it this weekend - woo hoo (seriously, I have three full days dedicated to smashing out a few chapters of my first fic, a bunch of apologies to some of my favourite people that have been reading it, and doing all my tumblr requests). This was a 'theseus dies/leta lives' tumblr request that I received a little while ago and I wasn't sold on Theta at the time but writing this really got me feeling real emo about them. This has no link - story or characterisation wise - to my other fic. I wrote a slightly more cheerful part two that I'm fine-tuning because I was pumped full of pain meds when I wrote it but I'll chuck it here once I'm done this weekend too. I was in a writing slump and having some serious sad bitch hours and these prompts and some other peoples beautiful encouragement really got me back into enjoying writing so to I might upload little one-shots over time in between focusing on my major fic mainly for myself but you're welcome to read along if you would like.**

_**It could never have lasted…such happiness.**_

Leta silently and delicately packed up the items – even the half-crumpled up scraps of parchment with hastily scrawled reminders and mindless scribbles – as if they were fragile shards of Occamy egg shells. With her gloves removed and laid aside, she carefully handled each item individually, feeling the weight and the shape before laying it on the bunched-up newspapers that had been roughly stuffed into the cardboard box that had been left on the desk prior to her arrival.

She was well aware and not at all fretted by the stares of the Aurors that were working behind her, awkwardly trying to busy themselves in their paperwork likely wondering why she was drawing out this uncomfortable, awful task when she could put herself - and the rest of them - out of their misery with the wave of her wand and a simple packing spell.

But even they, as brave and highly skilled wizards as they were, wouldn't dare approach her with this suggestion.

Leta wanted to do it this way. No one really understood Theseus' strange insistence on doing everything manually. Collecting firewood, brewing tea, getting out of bed in the bitterly cold morning hours to get an extra blanket or a book on the dresser, making little use of the Ministry interdepartmental owls to cheerily whistle his way across the different floors to deliver his letters himself (though he always took the route – no matter how long and ridiculous – that took him past her desk).

Leta had understood though – eventually.

She absentmindedly pulled the sleeve of her dress further down her wrist, doing little to hide the mottled scars peeking out from the fabric and creeping across her hand. It was hard to imagine magic as being anything other than a mangled, twisted thing.

Leta was thirteen before she found out it could be beautiful – sitting cross-legged with Newt, sometime past midnight, with his first incorporeal Patronus a misty silver cloud above them, her hand over her mouth and unexpectedly, to his horror and her embarrassment, starting to cry.

The war had given Theseus a heroic reputation, the accompanying renown and respect, a notable career and a bravery medal (which Leta had found once she worked up the courage to visit, only days after he had been sent home from the hospital, on the ground outside, among shards of glass and a telling broken window behind it) but it had taken so much more.

For all the fame and admiration that he seemed to amass, she was the only one who would notice him disappear continually.

The first panic attack she had seen was after she had noticed him slip away from the celebratory party the Ministry had thrown in his honour after he was discharged from the hospital. The party, she remembered, that he had no shame in unfairly bullying her into attending with pleading blue eyes, messy brown curls and looking as tragic as possible all bandaged up in his hospital bed. She watched grumpily from the corner where she had taken residence for the past two hours thinking on loop what a waste of a nice dress this evening had been, how long it had taken her to get her hair neat and how her constant attempts to be kind to people kept ending up in her being roped into situations like this.

Everyone had started shooting red coloured sparks in the air which exploded like fireworks in the large room which is when she'd noticed Theseus was gone. Leta rolled her eyes, figuring that he'd probably disappeared with one (or more – she didn't judge) of the women that were practically trying to hang off for most of the evening. She pushed herself off the wall, slightly annoyed at the fact that he seemed to have been enjoying himself quite alright on his own and her presence that he so insisted upon was, in her opinion, completely needless. Leta could have easily, like any other scorned woman, slipped out tearfully or in a huff but that sounded dreadfully dull and she may as well recoup some enjoyment from the dismal evening in the form of interrupting and annoying Theseus just once more before she left.

She searched the empty corridors and threw open the door to a small store room and froze mid-smirk to see him hunched over against the wall, rocking and hysterical, his hands tangled roughly in his hair as if he could crush his skull with his palms. To anyone else it would have looked as if he had completely lost his mind, but it was all too familiar to her.

Even during the worst parts of his recovery, his spell work was still excellent. His reaction time took a while longer to return but he rarely handled his wand opting to keep it in his coat pocket and only taking it out when necessary and even then, he would lift it with a weariness that was well beyond his age. It was the first thing to be tossed aside when he arrived home before messing up his hair and collapsing back on the couch.

Magic had been weaponised so much for him that it had lost any of the beauty it had held before. He had seen the worst side of it a lot later in life than she, but the effects had been no less damaging.

Leta nestled the Foe-glass and Sneakoscope safely between the pages of the old Daily Prophet's and fitted the tattered pack of Exploding Snap and roll of Spellotape down the sides expertly. She had plenty of practise from this from building and repairing the Augurey's nests in the woods around their house during the stormy months. Nothing moved around when she tipped the box slightly from side to side to check.

She ran her hand over the surface of the mahogany wood which had been cleared save for a framed picture facing away from her and a name plaque which she gingerly picked up and ran her fingers over each engraved letter and holding it to her chest subtly before nestling it in the box.

Leta didn't want to linger on the photo frame and instead wrapped it in his faded scarlet and gold scarf placing it on top of the pile and going to the other side of the desk to check the drawers once again.

The only thing that rattled in the drawer when she opened it was new. Another name plaque though this one was shiny and polished.

_Sterling Boyle_

_Head of Auror Office_

He sounded awful, Leta decided letting the plaque slip from her fingers into the draw with a clatter that made Auror Hessington jump in his chair. She imagined a balding, paunchy man with sweaty hands and moist lips. That's what she would have liked to have imagined. She didn't plan on sticking around to find out for sure.

To her complete reluctance, Newt's new American friends seemed to have adopted her against her will some time ago. They had been diligent in caring for Leta and Newt and so exhausted in doing so that when the short-haired woman, Tina, found the rare sight of Newt and Leta sleeping, she had covered them with blankets and passed out in one of the arm chairs. Leta knew it wouldn't be long before would one of them would wake and realise she was gone.

Leta let her hand lay on the desk a moment longer before slowly curling her fingers away and putting her gloves back on. With great care, she slid the long overcoat and then, due it to being double the size of her, meticulously folded it three times and hung it over her arm. She picked up the box, her small frame, dehydration and sleep deprivation doing very little in aiding her with the weight and walked past all the Aurors who quickly starting shuffling papers at random. Auror Netley held an upside-down report in front of him.

She smirked slightly at their thinly veiled disdain. If it wasn't her maiden name, the colour of her skin, or her unworthiness as a suitable wife for such an Auror, it was surely the way she could carry all this weight in her arms and her heart without so much as a discreet, politely concealed sob.

"MORNING ALL," Hector Fawley bellowed as he burst through the double doors to the office unnecessarily. "BIG DAY TODAY, BIG DAY! NOW BEFORE-"

The Minister of Magic stopped in his tracks so quickly, Leta wasn't sure if she imagined the squeal of his shoes or not. He turned from side to side quickly as if assessing whether there was any possibility, he could avoid the attention of the woman in front of him.

As if Flamboyant Fawley could ever avoid being noticed.

"Ah!" he clapped his hands together as if she were the jolliest surprise. "Miss Le-Mrs Scamander! We weren't expecting you…"

His eyes, full of badly hidden panic, drifted down to her full arms. "Ah! We would have delivered those items for you. Here, allow me…"

Leta turned herself slightly to keep the box out of reach.

"I am more than capable, sir."

Fawley let his open hands swing and clap together and Leta could hear him practically screaming in his head. He had unfortunately gone through this uncomfortable talk with women before but likely not with someone like her.

"Well, erm…if you need anything…just ask. We're more than happy to assist."

"Thank you," Leta cut across icily. "I think you've done enough."

"Yes, well. If you're sure then…I hope, we all hope, you're keeping well. Sleeping enough and such."

"Well enough," she smiled. "And you, sir?"

"Pardon?"

"Your sleeping, Minister Fawley," Leta answered. "How are you sleeping these days?"

"Um, I suppose it's…okay," Fawley answered, entirely aware of the whole office of Aurors watching him be terrified by a five-foot girl. "Um, but, again anything you need…just send word. Rest up and…all the best."

"Thank you," she said with graceful iciness, and her eyes drifted to the colourful tea cup in his hand. "And to you as well. Rest peacefully."

She heard Fawley tip his tea into the sink as she left and hoped Theseus would appreciate that. He had always enjoyed finding comical use of her last name which had, for most of her life, caused her nothing but misery.

"_There you are!" she remembered Theseus had exclaimed joyously, skidding to a stop in front of her desk and nearly losing his footing on his unnecessarily (in her opinion) long coat._

"_Here I am," she replied dully, bundling parchment together with a stapling charm._

_Theseus knelt in front of her desk and folded his arms on the wood. She was sickened that, even on his knees, he was the same height as her sitting in a chair._

"_You're looking gorgeously glum this afternoon, Lestrange," he commented._

"_Travers is being especially delightful today," she sighed before freezing and slowly raising her hazel eyes to him. "You ought to watch your wandering hand, Mr Scamander, before it's stapled to the underside of this desk."_

"_My apologises, milady," he chuckled, surrendering the hand he had rested on her knee. "I have come to rescue my dearest from her boredom."_

"_You mean you need a favour," Leta said blankly returning to her work._

"_More of a joint venture," he explained. "I have some weary business with the Head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation who may become a lot more agreeable had he want our meeting over with quickly."_

_Leta brightened up immediately. She liked this game._

"_You require my sparkly personality?"_

"_Always, love," he smiled. "But more so your notorious, though occasionally handy, surname. May as well put it to use while you're still so reluctant to marry me anytime soon."_

"_Goodness, you can sulk," she rolled her eyes but laid aside her work. "What shall I do?" _

"_He's a jumpy fellow, if you just prepare some tea, I think that would suffice."_

"_Excuse me?" Leta pouted which made Theseus laugh and kiss both her hands._

"_Fine, I'll make the tea, suffragette, if you can bring it in with that beautiful icy uncomfortableness, you're so magnificent at emitting and with any luck, I can steal you from here early…"_

"_Lestrange! I don't hear the dulcet sounds of work being done!" her boss shouted from his open office door, not looking at her but clearly noticing the absence of stapling, paper shuffling and the scratching of a quill. "Get back to it or you'll be selling your body in the Prophet for rent money."_

_Leta smiled and grabbed Theseus' wrist to prevent him from standing up and going full Gryffindor. "Please don't kill my boss. He's the only person here who treats me the same as he does everyone else. Terribly." _

Snapping out of her thoughts, Leta walked out into the bustling street. It still seemed so inexplicable to her, that the sun was still hanging in the sky, that everyone was going about their day as if the world had not been viciously ripped in two – _before_ and _after_.

Leta realised absentmindedly that she ought to collect Theseus' car from one of the side streets. Another time, perhaps. Maybe she could ask Newt's Muggle friend for help. Theseus, and his fascination for tinkering with Muggle things, had some time ago impulsively decided to get and learn to drive a real Muggle car.

_Leta was reading and walking along the footpath to her old flat after work one evening and Theseus pulled up in the noisy absurd thing beside her, accidentally bumping into the curb, causing her to jump and drop her book, and the milk and the bag of apples she had bought. _

"_Lestrange!" he yelled cheerily. "Want to go for a ride?"_

"_Not even if it would cure dragon pox, Scamander," she replied, scooping up her belongings – the milk unsalvageable – and walking off. The next day at work there was a new bottle of milk on her desk._

Even afterwards, she could never fully embrace this strange joy of his for herself. It was certainly handy for the purpose of pulling her into the back seat of during their breaks to kiss her under she was dizzy but apart from that, she found it not at all a desirable mode of transport. She also hated broomsticks, Apparation, Floo Powder and portkeys and would avoid them to the best of her ability due to the unbearable waves of motion sickness that would undeniably follow.

Mrs Scamander, who had never been sick a day in her life and never let Leta or her two sons forget it, used to tell Leta, as she would hand her a paper bag when Newt half carried her off the Hogwarts Express, it was all psychological and that as soon as she fell for a boy cute enough she wouldn't get sick at all when he was flying her around on the back of his broomstick. The only time she wouldn't get sick was on a Thestral or a Hippogriff.

It turns out Muggle cars were not an exception either as an unconvinced Theseus found out when he jogged around chivalrously to open Leta's door and ended up with vomit on his shoes.

She had certainly improved over the course of the next few years and had even started to let Theseus teach her the very basics of driving – only around the empty gravel path near their house – she thought she may have been getting better, but she supposed it didn't matter now.

Despite her distaste for it, Leta rather decided disapparating would be preferable to being tracked down and dragged back by Tina Goldstein and found an empty street to do it from.

She imagined very clearly in her mind the small clearing that they used to apparate and disapparate from. Knowing how she struggled with apparation and to make visualising the place easier for her, Theseus had conjured a patch of colourful wildflowers that, over time, had spilled out around the mossy rock she would often sit and read on.

Leta felt the soft grass under her knees which had buckled and collapsed as she was violently thrown on to the ground. She had a good enough hold on the box that it didn't leave her arms thankfully though she put it aside carefully, so she could rest her head on the ground for a moment and let the horrible dizziness pass.

It was still a little walk to their house as Theseus had made it so. This was the closest point you could apparate to and even if one did, it was nearly impossible to locate if you didn't know precisely how to navigate yourself through the thicket of woods.

A clabbert, dangling from a branch by its green tail, dropped on to Leta's shoulder as she walked underneath the trees and curled up against her neck. She felt a pang of guilt at her prolonged absence. She had skirted around having creatures as _pets,_ but she certainly couldn't be held responsible if they all decided to take residence around their home. Leta had, not at all as sneakily as she had thought, made the conditions perfect for all manner of creatures enough so that they could be completely self-sufficient. Though she had worried she may had babied them a little too much and it was one of the reasons she had decided to escape while everyone was sleeping.

Leta walked along the path that led to the house Theseus had built out of what could nearly be described as ruins of a cottage, rather experimentally with his own hands which had seen her foot go through the porch step more than a few times. Besides the twinkle lights leftover from their wedding that she had been too short to pull down completely and left half dangling and half piled on the floor, everything was perfectly in place, suspended in time, and it was surreal to remember her life was not how it was the last time she had stood here little over two months ago.

The window frames with glimpses of cream coloured curtains, the flowering vine climbing frothily up the stone walls, a ball she used to entertain the Hippogriffs if they ever wandered out, and two pairs of muddy boots left beside a table and bench strewn with cushions and blankets. Leta sighed as she saw an empty cup and a small pile of books on the table that had clearly been rained upon and weathered in her absence.

Leta fumbled with her wand among everything she was carrying, careful not to disturb the clabbert now snoozing in between her neck and the dip of her collarbone, and tapped it against the lock. "Alohomora," she uttered, and she heard the distinguishable click.

"_Okay, listen to me, Miss Lestrange, because I am a visionary," Theseus said standing in the doorless doorframe, covering Leta's eyes with his hands before releasing her._

_He immediately started his pitch before she could draw a breath to comment. "Imagine sunlight flooding through the hallway because of the windows we'll put here and here. Imagine this -" he gestured to what was a half knocked down wall that reached Leta's waist. "– as a wall again, obviously, but painted a nice colour. Maybe yellow, your favourite. Or we can keep it as stone if you like."_

_Leta went to take a step and felt the ground crunch beneath her shoes. She looked down to see the floor was simply the dirt and patches of weeds that he had blindly led her through moments ago._

"_This will be floorboards soon enough – or carpet – though I think floorboards will be more conducive to all the mud you'll inevitable track in from your adventures outside that you'll do your best to keep from me. We'll put a table here with flowers and letters and an umbrella stand here. We'll hang photographs of our adorable children along this hallway here – not those horrible professional portraits we were all made to do – real photos of them doing child things."_

_Leta tried not to laugh at Theseus having to resort to 'child things' rather than offering an example of what a child may enjoy and remembered him pretending to read the Daily Prophet thoughtfully while barely understanding the contents while her and Newt played outside, emptying Theseus' bottles of ink to use as specimen jars._

_Theseus continued with his visualisation and she tried to imagine but she was suffering from a bad cold and forgotten to take Pepper-Up Potion this morning, the leftover nausea and dizziness from carsickness was still swirling about in her stomach and her eyes were all watery and sore. Theseus caught her shoulders when she tripped over a hammer that had been clearly been thrown in frustration one day._

_Leta looked at the disaster of a project and all the Muggle tools that littered the area and turned around in his arms to stare up at him lovingly with amusement and incredulity. "You're out of your mind, Scamander."_

"_Well, I find my mind is a rather overrated place to be," Theseus scooped her up with a chuckle and spun her around much to her, and her stomach's, protest._

But, to his credit (and maybe a little magical help from Leta without his knowledge), it was exactly as he had described it.

The sunlight, the cluttered hall table, the floorboards shining gold, a hat stand filled with hats and scarves. Leta hung his coat on one of the hooks on the hatstand, which the clabbert climbed into the pocket of to snooze, and placed the box down on the table. She continued down the hallway, not stopping, only touching things with a vague caressing fingertip. She glanced briefly at the framed photos, trailing her finger along the wooden frames that had accumulated some dust. Most of them were empty – he had specifically reserved certain ones for photos that would now never be taken – and she didn't quite feel up to having to face herself beaming like a naïve idiot. She glanced up at the last frame – Newt's '_Wanted'_ poster. Somehow it felt like his uncharacteristically gloomy scowl was specifically for her.

"Don't look at me like that," she muttered as she walked into the living area. It was a lovely open space, so they could see each other from the kitchen or dining room and see out into the back garden. It had been Leta's idea, all those years ago. She had sketched it on a napkin at the Leaky Cauldron one evening after work and held it up with a proud smile. _"You're not the only visionary around here!"_

Leta was not smiling by the time she reached their bedroom at the top of the stairs. She was hyperventilating.

She stood in the familiar bedroom looking for something – anything – that belonged to Theseus. There was no sign of him. No pile of books on his bedside table. No cylindrical columns of sickles taken from his pocket. No ties draped over the chair. Not even a lone crumpled shirt or sock that she was always reaching with stretched fingers for under furniture, eventually resorting to _accio_.

Leta and Theseus were both messy people despite how orderly her husband appeared. Their clothes were usually tangled together on the floor in messy embraces before washing day. No number of hatstands or clutter-specific tables were quite enough incentive to store things appropriately. Leta thought it might be the former Keeper in him, but he always felt it necessary to toss things across a room rather than walk, what would be in his large steps, a few paces instead.

She threw open their wardrobe to find it mostly empty with heavy wooden hangers, a few containing just her clothes. She longed to see just one of Theseus shirts. Even a boring work shirt or an old Quidditch t-shirt or a large cosy knitted sweater. She would wrap its sleeves around her like his arms and bury her nose in the collar like a lovesick teenager.

As she closed and leaned against the wardrobe door and looked around the room, a feeling of panic exploded in her chest, she realised how clean it was.

_Her mother-in-law._

Mrs Scamander had channelled her wave of grief into pedantic tidiness and helpfulness and in doing so, eradicated any sign of Leta's husband's existence from their room…

Their room? Her room.

_He's dead, Leta! You stupid girl!_

She looked down at her hands to find them shaking. The glass in the bedroom window rattled and the wind of her own creating to violently lash about the room knocking everything over. Her hair became undone and whipped around her face as she sunk to the floor and wrapped her arms around her body to try and contain her feelings before she ended up blowing the house apart, knowing there wasn't anyone to talk her down from it this time.

Her touch fell upon something cool and smooth on her finger and she was reminded, as she looked down at her wedding band, that he was real, and she was real, and she wasn't losing her mind. She was married to Theseus Scamander. No domestic hurricane of a mother-in-law, newly appointed, paunchy Head Auror, or Grindelwald or his murderous, maniacal followers could take that at least.

He may not be alive, but they were still married, weren't they?

Leta let out a tiny pained gasp as a word surfaced to her mind.

_Widow_.

She was a _widow_ now. It was so ridiculous she could have laughed and sobbed at the same time. Widows were blissfully old and grey and possessed decades of memories. She wasn't old and grey (or blissful for that matter). She was _twenty-nine._ And although she did have many years of memories that she may one day be able to think back on without closing in on herself, she had been married for such a short time. She was still picking bits of flower confetti out of her hair, shoes, and belongings sporadically.

The grief she had carefully placed aside since a grave looking Auror had interrupted her and Newt chasing an injured crup in Scotland a few weeks ago, poured out and winded her in the chest like a stunning spell. It was so vicious that uncontrollable nausea hit her in the stomach with equal force. She stood up and ran to the adjoining bathroom where she was more violently sick than she'd ever been in her life.

Leta couldn't even stop when she heard the front door slam followed by the familiar pattern of rushed, clumsy footsteps taking the stairs two at a time and then hopping over the mess of discarded items her emotions had scattered across the floor.

"_Leta_!" she heard the most familiar voice in the world from the doorway, halfway between a worried gasp and a relieved sigh. Newt's world had come crashing down rather swiftly as he fell to his knees upon hearing of his brothers' fate and sobbed into Leta's shoulder when she had slowly knelt beside him. The following weeks were the worst of his life and to add to it, he, and the rest of the group, had been cautiously tiptoeing around Leta, who had been acting relatively normal, and waiting assiduously for her careful composure to crack.

Newt slid down to where she lay on her side shivering with her clammy forehead pressed against the tiles. Everything she had repressed suddenly burst open in her chest, enormous weight crushing her from the inside out and escaping in a soul-wrenching wail that bore the weight of decades of trauma. The pain she had once sworn to herself to never experience ripped through her in a way that made her feel like her soul was being separated from her body. She thought this must be what being attacked by a dementor felt like or perhaps more akin to making a horcrux, either way she was certain this kind of evisceration would kill her.

Newt wrapped his arms around her middle and she leaned back into him, absolutely wailing and sobbing irrepressibly. There was no point trying to put a stopper in the devastation now. The rattling window and mirror shattered, and Newt turned them slightly to shield her, the glass bouncing off his back and on to the tiles which had started to crack and peel away from the floor. A more rational person would have run but this was Newt who just squeezed her tighter. Newt who had very little sense of self-preservation but a huge sense of duty to broken creatures. He had tended to wounded dragons and cooed a distressed erumpents to sleep, but far more impressively, he'd done this time after time when her agony or fright took hold though not for many years now. But, just as it had worked when they were younger, he managed to calm her before any more damage could occur.

After what seemed like hours of Newt rocking her and soothing her til his lips were dry and her crying til her throat was hoarse and she was dizzy from it, she finally went floppy against him. He leaned forward to see if she had passed out, but she was still awake, her breath shuddering and her chest still contracting erratically. The light in the room was slowly dimming as the sun slowly sunk down in the sky bathing the room in a warm, peachy orange. Leta probably would have found it extremely comforting and pretty…before. Now she just found it audacious. How dare the sun set yet again on a world without him?

Newt had propped her up against the bathtub and cast a silent spell that swept the shards of glass and broken tiles in to a corner before sitting against the opposite wall and resting his shoes against the bathtub next to her.

They sat in comfortable silence for a while until Newt noticed tiny droplets of blood on the floor beside her.

"You've splinched your fingers," he croaked and leaned forward to examine her hand. Leta looked down at the bloodied fingertips and missing fingernails and then closed her first.

"I…didn't notice."

"I have some dittany in my case…"

"It's not so bad," she reassured wearily, and Newt frowned in a displeased, determined way she hadn't seen on him for the longest time.

"I have to take care of you."

Leta scoffed but she smiled endearingly. "Do you, now?"

"Well, yes," he said, the tiniest bit offended at her tone and Leta couldn't help but bite back a chuckle at how he tried to square his shoulders. "You know, you and I are the last Scamanders, besides mother. Can't have us dying out."

Leta shook her head incredulously.

"You're so dramatic. You'll get married and have children, Newt," she said, kicking a loose shard of tile he'd missed. She had meant to sound teasing, but it came out flat and strained. She cleared her throat and tried to continue light-heartedly. "It's just the shame the next generation of Scamander's are going to awkward, pale, freckly gits. We all knew it was going to be _my_ genes that would save this family."

"Dramatic?" Newt's eyes widened and the first smile since Theseus' death played on the edge of his lips. "You just ripped apart a perfectly good bathroom. And the state of you…"

"I'm _GRIEVING_. I can do whatever I please. This is a very exciting time for us, Newton. You want to take a Beaters baton to the fountain in the Ministry of Magic? Because we could do that, you know."

"I don't think that's how it works…"

"And the state of me?" she continued, folding her arms and hiccupping. "I'm an extremely pretty crier, I'll have you know. Look how big and sparkling my eyes are at the minute. Would've made you weak at the knees at seventeen."

"Extremely pretty," he reassured playfully. "Even with the snot bubbles and vomit you've gurgled on to my coat."

"Well, it's not a disservice is it? That coat's absurd. Blue!"

"Absurd?" he frowned. "You said you liked it!"

"Yes, well I missed you terribly, didn't I? It was hard having to seduce you into being my best friend again now I have to compete with the baker. Its okay, We-I've gotten you a very similar coat in green for Christmas."

"Your house colour, of course."

"No, because it matches your eyes and it's always looked nice with your hai-Why do you always assume the worst of me, Newton?"

"Um," he gestured in an obvious sort of way. "Probably because I know you better than anyone."

She paused with a frown. It was a fair statement.

"We need to fix that hand," Newt reminded her and stood up, his legs numb, and offered her his hand. "And then probably get some sleep."

Leta hesitated. "I…want to stay here, I think. Tonight at least."

"That's okay, I've brought my case with me," Newt said. He knew leaving her was out of the question and he'd already told the others that he needed to go find her alone. She would close up around the others and she tended to lash out when she felt trapped. "Why don't you take a bath or shower, get the wound clean and I'll make us something to eat and go set up the spare bed?"

Leta did what he asked and wrapped her towel around herself after her shower and padded into her bedroom, her wet hair dripping into the carpet as she stood tentatively in the middle of it, staring at their perfectly made bed.

"Newt!" she called out and he nearly fell through the door.

"What's wrong?!"

She frowned and clutched on to her towel, feeling her chest start to tighten again.

"I don't want to stay in here," she trembled, nearly child-like and she hated herself for it.

"Sure," he said, unquestioning, and rummaged through the dresser to his left to find a comfortable looking pair of pyjamas which he tossed at her. "Why don't you get dressed and come down into the case…it's in the living room."

Once she was done, she plaited her hair as she walked down stairs to join him. She put on her gumboots that he had placed beside the coffee table where his case lay, and she put them on before going to find him.

Leta nibbled at the pumpkin pasty he nearly shoved into her mouth whole when she declined and followed him around, absentmindedly handing him things he needed while he did his nightly rounds.

They kicked off their boots when they went into his workstation and Newt quickly tried to neaten the quilt on the bed he slept on while travelling before sitting Leta on it and going to his desk to find some dittany.

Leta glanced at a picture of Theseus he had on display and couldn't bear it, instead letting her eyes slide over the weathered one of her sitting on his desk.

"I've only asked you only half a dozen times to replace that picture," she whined distastefully, and Newt chuckled, walking back over with the dittany. "It's horrendous, I look like I'm eating a sour lolly and my jaw hurts."

"That's your normal face, Leta," he told her and wrapped up her fingers carefully. "And it's a sweet picture. _You _decided to put my _wanted_ poster up as my tribute on your little family wall."

"It's my favourite possession," she admitted, taking a gulp of the tea he put in her hands, and covered her with the quilt. "It wasn't easy to obtain. I think w-we broke some international law acquiring it from MACUSA but…" her eyes started to droop, and she felt her words becoming thick. "…it was…definitely…quite…"

Newt went back to his desk where he had some work to do and smiled at the sound of Leta mumbling incoherently, finally letting her head flop against the pillow. He hoped the Dreamless Sleep potion in her tea would give her a little reprieve for a couple of hours at least. He intended to stay sitting across from her the whole time, determined to take care of her. The memory of the confusing and short conversation he had last had with his brother, who had hugged him tighter than ever before, was what made him resurface, just a little, from his own grief. Newt had felt something was off in the way that Theseus asked him, his eyes pleading and sombre, to take care of her. Newt had assumed he was just being extremely serious about making sure they didn't get into trouble while he was gone but now he was starting to wonder if his brother may have known what was going to happen.

Newt paused in counting his lace wing flies to glance back at his dearest friend and his brothers' whole heart, who was passed out rather ungracefully. He smiled slightly and then picked up Theseus' picture, who was smiling at him proudly and placed it next to Leta's.


End file.
